Penn State's Dylan Alton tries to take down Northwestern's Jason Welch (rear) during their 157-pound quarterfinal round match at the NCAA Division I wrestling championships on Friday, March 22, 2013, in Des Moines, Iowa.

NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships

The finals matchups, which start at 8 p.m. Saturday and will be televised by ESPN:

DES MOINES, Iowa — David Taylor's fourth pin in as many matches at the NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships also went in the record books as his 100th career victory.

His 101st win will prove to be much more memorable if the Penn State redshirt junior can bag it on one of the biggest stages his sport has to offer.

Taylor and Cornell's Kyle Dake won within seconds of each other Friday night at Wells Fargo Arena, setting up a showdown for the ages Saturday night in the 165-pound national championship bout.

Taylor, the defending champion at 165, is trying to deny Dake a fourth national championship in four different weight classes. Taylor mowed through his side of the bracket, and his dominance has put Penn State in a solid position as it chases a third consecutive national championship.

The Nittany Lions have piled up 114.5 points. Oklahoma State is a distant second with 94 points. Even if Penn State joins Iowa and Oklahoma State as the only schools to win three consecutive national championships, the storyline will get trumped by what happens when Taylor and Dake meet for a third time this season.

“I'm taking the role as the guy who is not supposed to win, which is weird for me,” said Taylor, who lost a pair of 3-2 matches to Dake earlier this season. “I have the next day to relax and I have nothing to lose out there.”

The Nittany Lions sent a tournament-best five wrestlers to the finals, including 125-pounder Nico Megaludis, a Franklin Regional graduate; Matt Brown (174); Ed Ruth (184) and Quentin Wright (197).

Megaludis outlasted top-seeded Alan Waters of Missouri in a second sudden victory period. Both wrestlers escaped in the second sudden victory period, but Megaludis won a point for riding time, and he will return to the 125-championship match for a second consecutive season.

Wright advanced to the finals much the same way Megaludis had. He and Pitt's Matt Wilps squared off for a third time this season — each recorded pins in the earlier meetings — and battled to a virtual draw.

Wilps, a Chartiers Valley graduate, nearly scored back points at the end of a 1-1 match, but Wright did just enough to extend the bout to sudden victory. Wright won after the second sudden victory period because of more riding time.

The four-time All-American will wrestle in the NCAA finals for the third time.

No one in Des Moines has been more dominant than Taylor, who had yet to wrestle past the first period before recording a second-period fall Friday night against Virgina Tech's Peter Yates.

“When he's on fire, he's on fire and there's no stopping him,” said Ruth, who is also trying to win a second consecutive national championship.

Dake has taken a more methodical to the finals.

He sandwiched a pair of major decisions with 3-0 and 2-0 wins, raising the question of how aggressively the senior will wrestle against Taylor.

“I can score points when I need to,” Dake said. “If it comes down to it, I'm willing to throw down.”

Their rematch has been so anticipated that the NCAA shuffled the order of the championship matches in hopes of spotlighting a Taylor-Dake final.

“That's what everyone's waiting for. It's like, ‘OK, let's skip all of the other stuff and just let Dake and Taylor wrestle right now,' ” said 2012 Olympic gold medalist Jordan Burroughs. “I can see and feel the buzz around the place this weekend. It's a historic weekend.”

Scott Brown is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. He can be reached at sbrown@tribweb.com or via Twitter @ ScottBrown_Trib.

You are solely responsible for your comments and by using TribLive.com you agree to our
Terms of Service.

We moderate comments. Our goal is to provide substantive commentary for a general readership. By screening submissions, we provide a space where readers can share intelligent and informed commentary that enhances the quality of our news and information.

While most comments will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive, moderating decisions are subjective. We will make them as carefully and consistently as we can. Because of the volume of reader comments, we cannot review individual moderation decisions with readers.

We value thoughtful comments representing a range of views that make their point quickly and politely. We make an effort to protect discussions from repeated comments either by the same reader or different readers

We follow the same standards for taste as the daily newspaper. A few things we won't tolerate: personal attacks, obscenity, vulgarity, profanity (including expletives and letters followed by dashes), commercial promotion, impersonations, incoherence, proselytizing and SHOUTING. Don't include URLs to Web sites.

We do not edit comments. They are either approved or deleted. We reserve the right to edit a comment that is quoted or excerpted in an article. In this case, we may fix spelling and punctuation.

We welcome strong opinions and criticism of our work, but we don't want comments to become bogged down with discussions of our policies and we will moderate accordingly.

We appreciate it when readers and people quoted in articles or blog posts point out errors of fact or emphasis and will investigate all assertions. But these suggestions should be sent
via e-mail. To avoid distracting other readers, we won't publish comments that suggest a correction. Instead, corrections will be made in a blog post or in an article.